Just because you know what result you want (and you might not, that's OK) you still don't have to specify all steps to take to get there. Make sure they're not dependent on each other.Ī project doesn't have to be fully specified. Don't think about doing them, just what would have to be done. Write clearly the broad next steps you must take to move toward a finish line. Your job when you write tasks is to be the captain. Do I know what to say? No, I have to look something up first, so I can't respond yet. 'Respond to email' on a to-do list can feel daunting sometimes. Not very amazing, but all of a sudden quite trivial to do. Let's split up 'Respond to email' into the two simple steps of 'Check meeting agenda' and 'Reply whether I'm going'. The added clarity of the second makes it much easier to get started and done.Ī few other examples are changing 'Fix up the window' to 'Clean the window', 'Respond to email' to 'Reply to Sarah's email whether I wanna join the meeting', and 'Say the bug is fixed' to 'Tell the team slack channel the crash was in parsing and is now fixed'.Ĭlear tasks gives you context when you've forgotten the details and makes it much easier to pick up the task and get it done.Ĭombine this with clear wording and you've got to-do magic going on. 'Fix parsing' isn't as good as 'Fix the parsing crash bug' which isn't nearly as good as 'Sync crashing code and follow steps to reproduce the crash'. Wording a task for actionability can help a lot. Doesn't matter if you have to go and do something else and then come back, the project list keeps track of where you were. Whenever you pick the project up, you just continue on that same list. The project list itself acts as a stake in the ground. It's anything with multiple steps and a single goal. That means a dedicated list of tasks for a specific goal.Ī project can be to organize someone's birthday, fix a bug at work, buy a new sofa, or prepare and hold a presentation. The best way of organizing most tasks is in projects. Something to find them by when the time comes to do them. So all tasks need a project or due date or label. And one big long list for everything doesn't count, that's just a soup where tasks go to die.Īn untied task gets lost and a lost task isn't very actionable.

That means a due date, project list, or label, whatever your tool has. A task won't get done unless it's found, so it has to be tied to something.

Todoist set recurring task